Between 1550 and 1800 the Northern Netherlands went through a period of intense
economic development. This did not leave the surrounding regions untouched.
International trade blossomed, tens of thousands of foreign workers found
employment in the Netherlands and many millions of guilders were channelled
abroad to finance foreign commercial undertakings and government policies. This
book offers the first systematic analysis of the international impact of Dutch
economic development and investigates the economic consequences of Dutch
dominance in the areas bordering the North Sea. By using a wide variety of
sources and literature Christiaan van Bochove describes the international flows
of goods, people and money, focussing attention on the effects on the prices of
everyday goods, the wages of labourers and interest rates. This book shows how,
by the end of the eighteenth century, the development of the Dutch economy had
turned the North Sea region into an integrated spatial economy that operated at
the frontier of what was technologically and institutionally possible.
